Cubs' Anthony Rizzo feels thankful for many reasons

Parkland product is planning first charity walk on Dec. 9

Sure, this is Thanksgiving, but Anthony Rizzo feels privileged every single day.

Not just to be a major league ballplayer at age 23, a rising star at first base for the Chicago Cubs.

Not just to be completely healthy after a 2008 bout with limited stage classical Hodgkin's lymphoma.

No, Rizzo feels privileged that his personal journey has allowed him to meet Danny, a high school baseball player in Illinois.

Danny has cancer. He is undergoing chemotherapy. He is fighting.

There's another boy named Carson out in San Diego, where Rizzo reached the majors as a Padre in 2011.

"My little buddy," Rizzo says.

Carson has cancer, too. He is 10 years old, and Rizzo has made it a point to stay in touch, even after getting traded last winter.

"I try to help out as much as I can," says Rizzo, a former Douglas High School standout.

Danny and Carson won't be able to make it to Parkland on Dec. 9, when Rizzo stages his first Walk Off For Cancer at Pine Trails Park.

They won't be able to check out the Livestrong booth or visit with doctors from the University of Miami's Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center.

But those courageous young boys will be on Rizzo's mind that day, just the way they are almost every day of this ballplayer's privileged life.

Plenty of others will be, too, as Rizzo makes his way around the fundraising walk with his parents, John and Laurie, and older brother John.

"It's awesome being able to interact with people, especially when they come up and share their story," Rizzo says. "I can relate to anyone who's gone through cancer. It's not fun. It's not fun for the family or the friends."

They send him handwritten letters, detailing their heartbreaking circumstances.

They scrawl hand-drawn pictures of this young ballplayer, who was one of them just a few short years ago, and they share those, too.

He isn't always able to answer immediately, but everyone who reaches out should know they have touched Rizzo in some profound way.

"It just makes me thankful for the little things in life," he says. "Getting up every day, just being healthy."

Which he wasn't for six months back when he was in Class A ball, just starting out with the Red Sox.

He has long since learned he wasn't alone.

"You see so many times where people get gut-checked or you're reminded of tragedies," he says. "Seeing someone who's not as fortunate as people who walk around every day, that sort of thing gets overlooked a lot until you get reminded or reality-checked yourself."

Like finding yourself wearing a hospital gown and hearing a doctor you've never met before tell you that baseball will have to wait until you deal with a much bigger foe first.

So many of them will be out there with Rizzo on Dec. 9 at his inaugural event. Organizers are expecting somewhere between 700 and 1,000 walkers, early pledges having already exceeded $40,000.

"It's awesome," Rizzo says. "We're trying to make this as big as possible. Hopefully in years to come it doubles, triples, just keeps expanding."

Down the road he'd like to add a golf tournament, maybe hold a second offseason event in Chicago.

Rizzo's parents have been instrumental in taking this idea from concept to reality.

It was his father, a manager for a security system company, who told him to stay humble no matter what blessings may come his way.

"If I get five hits in a game or don't get any hits, always be the same person," Rizzo says. "My dad has always been the same person. Even growing up, when he coached me in Little League or rec soccer or football, win or lose, he was always happy."

His mother, a bartender at Chops Lobster Bar in Boca Raton, shared many of those same lessons while insisting her children be "respectful and honest" in all situations.

"When you can't get something right then and there, keep pushing for it," Laurie Rizzo would tell her son. "Everything happens for a reason."

A little over four years after completing his six-month chemotherapy, one of Parkland's own is getting set to headline a cancer research event in his hometown.